Monty Oum

• 1. Introduction

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  Monyreak "Monty" Oum was born on the 22nd of June 1981, and by the time he died on the 1st of February 2015, he had remade what amateur animation on the internet could look like. He was 33 years old. He dropped out of high school, taught himself techniques by reverse-engineering video game files, and went from fan videos to leading animation at one of the most prominent web studios in the country. The questions his story raises are worth sitting with: how does someone with no industry credentials get hired by gaming studios within months of posting a single video? What drove a man who found the professional game industry frustrating to keep creating at that pace? And what does a GoFundMe raising over $210,000 in days tell us about the community he built around himself?

• 2. Providence and the Early Years

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  Oum grew up in Providence, Rhode Island, the youngest of seven children. His heritage was Cambodian, Vietnamese, Chinese, and Japanese. As a teenager he attended New Urban Arts, a community art studio in Providence designed for high school students. That experience gave him a foundation, but he did not finish school. He dropped out and began making gaming fan videos as early as 2002, years before most people understood what online video distribution could become. Providence was not a media hub, and Oum had no industry contacts. What he had was time, curiosity, and access to the early internet.

• 3. Haloid and the Viral Moment

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  In January 2007, Oum discovered reverse engineering techniques online that let him extract character models directly from Halo 2. Combining those assets with models from Super Smash Bros. Melee, he built a fight between a SPARTAN from the Halo franchise and Samus Aran from Metroid. He called it Haloid, a portmanteau of the two franchise names. The video went viral. Within two months of its release, multiple gaming companies had reached out to him. That speed tells you something about how hungry the gaming community was for this kind of self-produced, technically precise animation. Later in 2007, he followed up with Dead Fantasy, a series pitting characters from Final Fantasy against those from Dead or Alive.

• 4. Two Studios, One Frustration

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  Two months after Haloid premiered, Oum was hired by Midway Games as a combat designer. In 2008, Namco Bandai Games brought him on as a combat designer and animator for Afro Samurai. The professional game industry did not suit him. He found the experience frustrating, though the source does not detail why. In 2009, at a panel during San Diego Comic-Con, Oum met Burnie Burns, co-founder of Rooster Teeth. The two discussed the possibility of Oum joining the company. It took another year: at PAX East 2010, it was publicly announced that Oum had been hired as an animator for Red vs. Blue, Rooster Teeth's long-running web series.

• 5. RWBY and Rooster Teeth

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  At Rooster Teeth, Oum served as lead animator on Red vs. Blue and then created his own original animated series, RWBY. The show featured elaborate fight sequences between super-powered characters. Critical reviews highlighted the quality of its animated combat, and RWBY became a commercial success for the studio. Two full seasons were completed, with a third in production at the time of Oum's death. His older brother Neath took over voicing RWBY character Lie Ren after Monty died. The show continued after his death and has now run for nine seasons. Among the accolades the show received: a Streamy Award nomination in 2014 for Best Animated Show or Series, and a nomination from the International Academy of Web Television that same year for Best Animated Series.

• 6. January 2015

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  On the 22nd of January 2015, during what was described only as a simple medical procedure, Oum suffered a severe allergic reaction and fell into a coma. Eight days later, on January 30, Burnie Burns posted publicly that Oum was in critical care and that his recovery was uncertain. A GoFundMe page was set up for medical expenses and received over $210,000 in donations. On the 1st of February 2015, at 4:34 p.m., Oum died from anaphylaxis at a hospital in Austin, Texas. He was 33. The reaction that killed him was iatrogenic, meaning it resulted from the medical procedure itself. He left behind a filmography that stretched from his 2007 Haloid through Red vs. Blue, Immersion, and RWBY, as well as a role as the voice of Ren in the first two volumes of that series.